Can the parents of infamous criminals ever recover from the acts of their children?

As for how people look at you, I don’t think people look at you any differently.

This is based on my experience with a guy that I work with. He claims to have raised his son normally (and based on meeting some of his other kids I believe him). However one day something happened and his son ended up murdering his girlfriend and her daughter. The guy I work with said he never saw it coming.

Some people you might be able to see it coming, but others do pretty good at hiding it.

Odd that you should ask this today when only a few hours ago I was wondering what became of the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The infamy of the parents and the atmosphere of the times that had them executed had to have a strong impact on the children who were orphaned. I know this turns your question around to the children instead of the parents but I think the effect must be similar.

Perhaps it’s easier for children though. Their social life hasn’t been defined by community relationships, they can have their names changed and grow up in a new community where they aren’t likely to be recognized.

I have relatives in the Littleton area where Harris and Klebold’s parents lived and an ex-boyfriend was attending Columbine at the time of the shooting. His parents were acquainted with the boys’ parents. He told me that there was division but mostly a great support for the shooters’ families. In a crisis, most people were aware that those families were suffering also. I don’t think you’d ever get past the feeling of guilt though. That wondering if there wasn’t something you could have done.

@mrlaconic Not to sound heartless but the death of his g/f and her child I would gander hardly was on the radar outside the county or region it happened. When someone shoots or kills 15+ people in grand fashion like a Columbine or a V Tech incident people know about it in China. It is harder to travel out of your home area and go unnoticed or have people wonder about the name association even if they don’t ask. And her death though not known by the world press was still terrible.

Cool question @Hypocrisy_Central, one I’ve wondered about on occasions, as news breaks about another horror… The phrase ‘ever recover’ is the difficult bit – what would it mean? No one could ever forget, some might be able to let go or perhaps even forgive – in their own terms – but recover? Not sure.

Anyone with the same surname as the perpetrator or who has been knowingly involved or related are bound to be labeled and saturated in the attention to it. I think the answer(s) to the question are entirely relative. Unfortunately, living in such a blameful society, tends to mean that relatives are put under the spotlight and blame is sought. The fashion, especially here in the UK, is now to highlight as much about family background as possible, regardless of privacy or even the processes of justice.

This public attention, coupled with the mass of amateur psychobabble that accompanies it, seems to me to cloud the deeper issues rather than clarifying. There are good psychological portraits coming along now, of how the worst serial killers may have become skewed. But as this stuff feeds out, edited and patched together in the press or on tv, the desire from our culture to see drama and gawp at the horror is deeply distracting to understanding.

I pity those related to the perpetrators, they may not necessarily be culpable, but often get to carry much of the blame. It will be interesting to see what others have to say here.

One of the known sons of Charles Manson, Charles M Manson Jr. committed suicide in 1993.

No, one of our family friend’s daughters was in the Manson family. Her Mom and Dad were never the same.

Someone once told me that looking at your children is like looking in the mirror. You will either like or not like what you see. Taken from that sobering perspective I would ASSume these parents knowingly or not, do carry an enormous burden of guilt from their child’s deeds.

It’s got to be tough. My sons legal last name is very similar to McVay. He was in a psychiatriac hospital (he’s bipolar and had a really bad incident) and when I was visiting him a staff member came in and was asking for Timothy. (that is NOT anything like his first name!) I’m sure he was just associating a crazy McVay in his head, but it really pissed me off. I knew what had happened but just said, “There’s no Timothy here.”
Associations stay I the back of peoples heads even when they don’t want them to.

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It would probably place a stain on my life, as well.

@Judi So did they do that as a backdoor way to call your son a “whack job” because many believe Timothy was demented, or because of the name similarity the name “Tim” just glomed to it like PB&J or Coke Cola?

I don’t know their motive, but my son had just had a pretty scary outburst and I’m sure that they had probably been making jokes about his last name in the nurses station. The guy asked several times if he was Timothy, even though his first name is nothing like it. He came back a few seconds later with the right name.